There have heretofore been proposed various sensor devices of a type which detects the characteristics of a to-be-irradiated object by applying light to the to-be-irradiated object by a light emitting element and receiving specular reflected light and diffuse reflected light resulting relatively from the light incident on the to-be-irradiated object by a light receiving element. These sensor devices have been utilized for wide range of application fields, including, for example, photo interrupters, photo couplers, remote control units, IrDA (Infrared Data Association) communication devices, optical fiber communications equipment, and original size sensors.
As an example of such sensor devices in use, there is known a sensor device comprising a light emitting element and a light receiving element mounted on one single substrate, and lenses adapted to the light emitting element and the light receiving element, respectively (refer to Japanese Examined Patent Publication JP-B2 2939045, for example).
In recent years, however, higher-than-ever sensing capability has been sought after, which makes it difficult to achieve desired high performance capability even with use of the sensor device disclosed in the literature given above. This has created an increasing demand for a sensor device having even higher sensing capability and a light receiving/emitting element module that achieves the sensor device.
The invention has been devised in view of the circumstances as discussed supra, and accordingly an object of the invention is to provide a light receiving/emitting element module having high sensing capability, and a sensor device incorporating the light receiving/emitting element module.